Chemical synthesis has been used to produce various pharmaceutical compounds. Such synthesis typically includes numerous synthetic steps, which decrease the product yield as the number of steps increase. Moreover, chemical synthesis produces racemic mixtures of products, which generally must be resolved in order to isolate a particularly biologically active compound. Many synthetic methodologies are time consuming and require costly materials. As an alternative to chemical synthesis, an enzyme can be used to produce pharmaceutical compounds. However, enzymes can be inactivated under certain circumstances, including becoming denatured due to temperature, pH, and the like such that the reaction conditions must be monitored and controlled, which diminishes cost savings and require careful handling to maintain the enzyme's activity.
Thus, development of efficient synthetic methods for production of pharmaceutical compounds would be advantageous and would be favorably received in the art.